A year after Vermont embarked on a first-in-the-nation program to test hundreds of schools for toxic airborne chemicals known as PCBs, the findings have already led to several lawsuits.

In mid-June, Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark announced that she was suing Monsanto, the sole U.S. manufacturer of PCBs, over alleged harm to Vermont's natural resources, as well as to its schools. Less than two weeks later, 93 Vermont school districts joined as plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit against the company, seeking payment for costs associated with property damage from PCBs.

The lawsuits, both of which charge that the agrochemical company knew that PCBs were toxic as early as the 1950s yet continued to manufacture and market them, together represent a novel tack in legal maneuvering against the oft-sued agrochemical company: trying to recoup damages for widespread contamination of schools. The latest suits follow two others filed against Monsanto last year: one by the Burlington School District for damages related to contamination of the high school and another by two Burlington High School teachers who say a variety of health problems, including miscarriage and brain fog, were caused by their school-based exposure to PCBs.

In recent years, a growing number of states have sued Monsanto over PCBs. But those cases have focused on pollution of natural resources, not schools. According to a spokesperson for Clark, the decision to sue Monsanto for contamination of both schools and waterways stems directly from Act 74, the 2021 state law that requires more than 300 schools built or renovated before 1980 to test for airborne PCBs and — if levels are found to exceed state-determined thresholds — to identify and remove the sources of the chemicals. A year into testing, around one-third of the roughly 80 schools that have been sampled were shown to have PCB levels that require further action.

"Once testing showed schools with unsafe levels of PCBs, we began working toward a lawsuit against the entity responsible for this harm, Monsanto," the Attorney General's Office wrote in a statement to Seven Days.

Because documented PCB contamination of schools was "caused by the same conduct and the same defendant" as that of Lake Champlain and the Hoosic River, it made sense to include them in the same lawsuit, the attorney general's statement said.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit filed on behalf of 93 school districts, Addison Central School District et al. v. Monsanto Co. et al, focuses solely on school contamination. Pietro Lynn, a Burlington lawyer who frequently works with school districts on legal matters and filed the PCB suit, said that since testing began, school administrators expressed interest in participating in a lawsuit that would enable them to hold Monsanto responsible.

"If ... we're almost certainly going to have to incur public money to fix a problem someone else created — and made money creating — why wouldn't we, as responsible public fiscal entities, try to recover money from people who manufactured the thing we need to now clean up?" Lynn said.

Monsanto made PCBs from the 1930s to 1977 for use in fluorescent light ballasts and construction materials such as caulk, paint and glue. The EPA banned PCBs in 1979.

The legislature allocated around $29 million from the education fund to pay for PCB cleanup in schools this year — the lion's share for Burlington High School — but few believe that the sum will cover the total cost.

Christophe Courchesne, who teaches at Vermont Law School and directs its Environmental Advocacy Clinic, said the state's legal approach makes sense.

"When you've put a toxic chemical like this into the world in the quantities and various ways that [Monsanto] did, the system will respond with these types of legal actions," Courchesne said.

While Vermont is the first state to sue for contamination of its schools, Courchesne thinks more states will likely follow if they also begin testing their schools for the chemicals.

"Where there was a lot of construction during the period of time that PCBs were utilized ... you're going to see this, and it won't be a Vermont-only problem," he said.

Monsanto has characterized the Vermont lawsuits as meritless. In a statement responding to the school districts' suit, the company described the state's screening thresholds for PCBs in schools as "very low," calling them "orders of magnitude lower than the science-based evaluation levels" set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other states. The company also said "chronic deferred maintenance" of Vermont school buildings has led to air-quality issues that school districts and state are now trying to blame on Monsanto.

Courchesne, the law professor, said Monsanto's response follows "a familiar playbook" employed by manufacturers of pollutants in asserting that hazardous chemicals are safe as long as they fall under federal regulatory standards.

"We know from many contexts that exposure to chemicals at levels below federal standards can still be hazardous to health and safety, and states often enact more stringent standards to address these risks," Courchesne said.

Last December, Monsanto requested a delay in the demolition of Burlington High School so that it could inspect the building to bolster its legal defense. Then, in February, the company filed a motion to dismiss the Burlington School District lawsuit, but that was denied by U.S. District Court Judge William Sessions last month.

The company filed an emergency motion on July 3 to preserve evidence in the Addison Central School District, et al. case, requesting that school districts allow Monsanto to participate in their process of testing for PCBs and identifying the sources of contamination, and to observe and document ongoing PCB remediation efforts.

"To be clear, Monsanto does not want to interfere with any school renovation or remediation projects," the company said in a statement. "Its only goal is to preserve evidence vital to its defense before changes are made to schools that could destroy such evidence."

If the motion were granted, it could add logistical challenges to an already complicated testing process.

While Monsanto has sought to discredit the suits, it has agreed to sizable settlements with other states. In 2020, Monsanto's parent company, Bayer, reached settlements in PCB-related lawsuits with the attorneys general of New Mexico, Washington and the District of Columbia for a combined $170 million. The following year, the company settled with Ohio and New Hampshire for a total of $105 million. And just last December, Bayer settled a suit brought by Oregon's attorney general for almost $700 million.

Students and teachers who claimed that they suffered negative health effects from extensive PCB contamination at a school in Monroe, Wash., have recouped $665 million through five separate lawsuits, with additional cases scheduled back-to-back through 2026. Outdated fluorescent light fixtures in the school dripped sticky, PCB-laden oil. It's unlikely that such light fixtures remain in Vermont schools following lighting upgrades carried out by Efficiency Vermont over the past two decades.

Bayer, a global company with annual revenues topping $50 billion, has also settled more than 100,000 lawsuits involving the likely carcinogenic weed killer Roundup for around $11 billion. Monsanto started manufacturing that product in 1973.

In Vermont, any potential payoff will likely require lots of patience.

"I want Vermonters to know, this could be a long fight and there are no guarantees in litigation," Attorney General Clark tweeted the day she announced the state's lawsuit. "But we're in this for the long haul." A spokesperson for Clark noted that Oregon's lawsuit against Monsanto was settled more than four years after it was filed.

For school administrators dealing with the fallout from PCB testing, the drawn-out timeline comes as cold comfort.

Mark Tucker, superintendent of Caledonia Central Supervisory Union, said he's working with environmental consultants through the summer to address PCB contamination in three school buildings. Three of the five school districts in Tucker's supervisory union are plaintiffs in the Addison Central, et al. lawsuit.

At one of those schools, Cabot School, where elevated levels of airborne PCBs were discovered in the gymnasium a year ago, officials have yet to figure out a definitive remedy. But it appears likely that the gym roof, which was only recently replaced, may need to be taken off again to ensure that all the PCBs contained in the ceiling paint are removed.

"These things can take years," Tucker said of the pending lawsuits. "I'll be long gone before they ever get to resolution on this."